On Apr 7, 7:28 am, Bullwinkle wrote:
On 4/7/07 5:16 AM, in article
. com, "rasposter"





wrote:
On Apr 7, 6:01 am, Bullwinkle wrote:
On 4/7/07 12:34 AM, in article
, "Marc Ramsey"

wrote:
You should take a look at this:

http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/holm-dg300-e.html

Marc

My German skills are non-existant. Can anyone tell me if the lengthier
German part mentions which serial numbers are affected, because the English
part says the manufacturing error began sometime during the production run.
Presumably that means some of the early DG-300's were built right.

Thanks,
Bullwinkle

You can try translating the DG webpage with this one:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

Just drop the URL into it, and choose "German to English".

-John W

OK: thanks!

Did that, and to answer my own question: no, no serial number range is
listed. Hopefully that will come out as DG and Elan/AMS continue to work the
problem.

As a summary, much of the longer German portion appears to be heavy duty
mental handwringing over what DG should do with the info that the spars are
weaker: ground the fleet, require a very expensive inspection, or just
impose some restrictions on speeds and weights. Clearly they have done the
latter.

I have to believe that Elan/AMS has sufficient manufacturing records to
determine when they changed their process, either by serial number, or by
date (from which affected serial numbers could be derived). You'd think
they'd keep those records for legal reasons, if no other.

Hoping for further clarification,
Thanks,
Bullwinkle- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


My wife is a native speaker of German. I asked her to read this and
even though she isn't familiar with some of the terminology here is a
summary of generally what it says.

The glider that was inspected which resulted in this discovery is
about 20 years old and they did not report its serial number. At some
point ELAN started manufacturing the wings not to design
specifications. They apparently started using epoxy resins rather
than polyester resins (as were specified) in the affected part of the
spars possibly to reduce the curing times. This was done without
notification let alone approval from Glaser-Dirks. ELAN is aware that
they did this and ELAN does not dispute doing it but says they refuse
to take on any inspection costs. Also, they have been unresponsive to
DG's inquiries regarding this matter.

DG estimates the inspection cost to be around 6,000 euros and repair
cost could easily come to 5,000 euros per wing. DG says to maintain
consistency the inspection and repairs should all be done at the DG
factory in Germany so there will also be shipping costs. DG goes on
to say this option is not really discussion worthy for the pilots.
They rather opted for doing calculations and endurance tests on the
affected parts to prove that they are still sufficiently stable and
that the airplanes can be flown safely at reduced speeds and use.
This is apparently why they decided to just reduce the speeds, take
off weight and limit use. They say the current fleet is about 500
gliders worldwide.

I, for one, bought a DG-300 for its superior strength among other
reasons. We will have to wait for more clarification from DG but at
this point it seems that strength has now been reduced. Since this is
admittedly the fault of ELAN for not following the correct
manufacturing process and not notifying DG that they were altering the
manufacturing process this seems like a negligence issue. I would
hope they would do something to rectify the situation.

Bob
DG-300, S/N 3E-127